Special Delivery From Outer Space
by Nitrobot
Summary: One stormy summer night a meteor zooms through the sky, landing in Steven's backyard. And inside it is a confused green dorito who needs a hug. [Stevidot, AU with normal 16 year old human Steven]
1. Chapter 1

_Originally posted on AO3; I wanted to wait until I finished it before hosting it anywhere else._

 _For all intents and purposes consider this an AU where Steven is a normal 16 year old boy (not a gem hybrid) who lives with his dad and who's never seen a gem_ before.

 **xx**

With the sky ahead of him a soup of smokey black and swirling grey, roiling charcoal waves holding back distant thumps of thunder, the air warm and heavy on his shoulders, it was obvious that it would rain that night. But taking his usual space on the hill at the sandy fringe of the beach, Steven didn't mind. He'd go home soaked, fingers slick from the rain and stiff from plucking at guitar strings, the one he'd gotten for his sixteenth birthday just a few weeks ago, but his head would be lulled and calm and that was all that mattered.

Sometimes his dad accompanied, moreso when Steven was younger and still trying to noodle a ukulele, but he got distracted easily. The harmony would fade and stop, and Steven would find his father staring off into the shimmering sunset, or the faint light of the stars as they filled his eyes. And whenever he asked what he was looking for, he just shook his head, and the stardust was gone like waves pulled back into the ocean below them.

On his own, Steven sometimes tried to look for himself, to catch a glint of whatever it was that wrenched his dad's attention so far away, but all he got for his effort was stinging eyes and weary sighs. Maybe it was an adult thing.

So resigning himself to that, he sat down with eyes low and played the usual melody, the one his father wrote when he was born and, allegedly, based off of Steven's musical cries. Slowly his fingers migrated to other rhythms, not following any one kind of composition, simply gliding to whichever strings suited them best with the summer thunder above and gentle waves below guiding him.

But when he opened his eyes, watching the last of the sun disappear for the day, his fingers slipped.

"What the…?"

The sky that was like that thrumming furnace before was now cleaved in two by a shock of white trailing behind something almost as big as the moon seen from Earth. Steven had seen meteor showers before but this was different, vastly so. For starters, there was only one of them, and it was flinging itself through the atmosphere like a rocket or… something dangerous. And it was sinking lower and lower, as if toppling from space, burning its way through the bloated clouds to reveal the stars glittering behind them… and as Steven pushed himself to his feet, he realised it was heading right for his backyard.

He stumbled in the sand with his guitar weighing him down, panting wildly with a thousand horrible and fiery thoughts in his head, watching the rock so far ahead dwindle in size but shoot faster and faster towards the ground, so by the time he reached the house it had already ploughed through the dirt behind it. A huge trench of mud marked the huge rock's path to where it landed, at the foot of a surprisingly sturdy tree, and Steven was doubled over half with relief and half with exhaustion when he reached the edge of it. Meteor or fallen satellite or whatever it was, at least it didn't hit the house.

And whatever it was… maybe it was the same thing his dad tried to look for.

Then it cracked open, and the mighty sound of crumbling rock was still lingering when he threw himself behind a mound of dirt. He peeked over the very tip of it, barely breathing, watching something emerge from the smoking rock. One arm… a gauntlet of sorts with dangling fingers, weakly rising up and probing the air. There was a cough, a very human sound, and a rough splutter until the trails of smoke cleared and another gauntlet shot up to drag the rest of the being out of the rock. Mint green skin with charred grey stains, a blue tongue lolling from a groaning mouth, and wilted yellow hair in the strangest style Steven had ever seen were the main features of the alien crawling out the wreckage. Then he saw the green stone embedded just below the hairline and just above a cracked yellow visor, those strange floating fingers rubbing it tenderly.

"Uh… hello?" He stood up slowly from his cover, not sure what to expect from the visitor or if he should still be running the other way. But it didn't seem dangerous, didn't even seem to notice him as it frantically spread out a set of fingers and tapped at one of the fizzing gauntlets.

"H-Home...Homeworld, come in… Yellow Diamond? Jasper? Anyone?" The voice was frail and high pitched, definitely female if it was coming out of a human. Steven wasn't sure if he was more surprised at how desperate the alien sounded or at the fact he could understand the words. He watched her, whatever she was, kneel among the chunks of chipped rock and churned mud and the eyes behind her visor widen more and more as something like panic and certainly despair took hold. So she was just as surprised to land here as he was to find her. Knowing that, Steven straightened up and slowly climbed down into the trench, taking greatest care not to send any stones falling down.

"Excuse me, are you alright?" Though he kept his voice low, blanketed with concern, the alien was on her feet- similarly augmented like her hands, the blocky green boots lifting her up at least a head above him- in a second, snapping around to face him in even less time with the visor barely holding back her glare. Steven cowered back more from her eyes than the glowing cores of her palms aimed at him.

"W-who… where am I?" she demanded, all trace of fear dissolved in suspicion. "What planet is this!?"

Steven blinked slowly, cautious that any wrong move could startle her. And he was more worried of that than any kind of retaliation. "Um… we call it Earth."

She scowled, but some kind of realisation must have started to trickle in as she too was blinking, the scorn dying down as she squinted at him. "A… you're a human?" Her arms and their humming gauntlets lowered, and she looked left and right around the crater she'd made and the leaves rustling on the tree branches hanging overhead, then at the slowly healing rift in the twilight sky. " _This_ is Earth?"

Steven watched her take in the muted surroundings of his home, as if she recognised them in a distant kind of way, and couldn't help smiling. If she knew what a human was, then surely she'd be easy to make friends with. "Yup! I'm Steven-" He stepped forward, but as soon as his foot went down her palms shot back up in front of her.

"Stay back! Or… or I'll blast you!" She was shrieking now, digging her boots into the dirt as the glow in her palms brightened like a pair of stars clutched in her hands, and the stone in her forehead reflected it.

"Hey, hey, calm down! I'm not gonna hurt you!" Steven held his own hands out in the closest thing he could think of to a peace offering, his guitar held on its strap behind his back. But his surrender only seemed to agitate her more, and she gritted her teeth around the tip of her tongue as she clenched her fingers around the flickering flare.

"Not while I've got you in my sights, you're not- GAAAH!" All of a sudden she leapt backwards, shaking her arms like they were on fire, because they _were_ \- at least, the gauntlets were, fizzing and sparking between the panels, forcing her to tear them off her hands and throw them aside. Curiously the fingers seemed to drop individually, rolling aside from the main gloves like thin yellow rods. She panted and hissed, waggling her real fingers and checking the bare green skin of her hands. Steven glanced at the discarded gloves, still twitching from arcs of electricity leaping up from it, but at least the deadly glow had died away.

Clenching her naked hands into fists, the alien growled and pointed at him. "Alright, you little clod, you might have managed to break my augments somehow-"

"Actually, I think the crash did that," he tried to point out as she advanced on him and continued her threat.

"But I don't need them to kick your-!" She stopped, as if her boots were glued down or a wall had just shot up in front of her. But neither case was what happened, rather a drop of water had hit her outstretched finger. Then another hit her shoulder, and another on her arm, until the both of them were drenched in seconds as the heavens sealed together again and opened their floodgates in revenge.

"What the… what is this?!" Her voice went quiet and shaking again, as if it were bullets hitting her and not just drops of water. The downpour washed away the soot marks on her skin, leaving behind a fresh green that shivered from the impacts against it, and her stiff hair fell in thick tresses across her stricken face and shoulders. Only her eyes were left dry by her visor, and they were bright with terror all over again.

Steven, on the other hand, was basking in the refreshing shower until he saw the alien cowering back towards her shattered vessel. "Relax, it's just rain!" he said, shaking his head so his curls threw droplets everywhere and laughing all the while.

From the semi-shelter of the meteor, she watched him standing happily in the deluge as if he was dancing on top of lava.

"...Rain?" she repeated.

"Water, from the sky. It's harmless," Steven explained, pointing upwards at the thick clouds starting to fade, the curtain behind the stars pulling back. She blinked, uncertain if he was telling the truth, but tentatively holding her finger out again and letting the water patter softly on it. She stood up again, smoothing back the soaked strands of her hair uneasily, and flinched less with each raindrop that found its way to her. Someone who'd never seen rain before… what else would be new to her here? What kind of world did she come from that didn't have something as simple and cleaning as rain?

"But it can get pretty cold if you're wet, so you'd be better off coming inside," Steven said, kneeling to pick up the gauntlets before the wet mud swallowed them up. The alien glanced down, narrowing her eyes at him with her devices cradled in his arms.

"What are you doing?" It was more curious than accusatory, and it didn't seem she was too defensive over them if they weren't working.

"Helping you with your stuff, even if it's broken just now," he answered. "Then we can get back to the house, and you can get warm and comfortable. And there's food if you're hungry."

But she must have stopped listening at some point, from how her face went blank and her mouth made all sorts of shapes. "You're… inviting me? Into your…'house'? A haven of some kind?"

"Of course. You landed in my backyard, so you're a guest," Steven said with a smile of pure habit. "I'm sure Dad won't mind."

She stared at him, her broken gauntlets, up at the sky still weeping and back at her meteor before looking back at him. "You are… a strange human," she decided, and her confusion only went deeper when Steven laughed.

"You're not the first to say that. Come on, I'll lead the way." He turned to walk back up the side of the trench, struggling slightly with the mud sliding under his feet and leaving him grateful he put something other than sandals on them. But he felt something boosting him up from behind, careful hands around his guitar, and when he was at the top he saw the alien easily scaling the low wall with her boots planted deep in the dirt. He gave her a grateful smile before heading on, slow steps towards the house so she could follow at her own pace.

"You said your name was… Steven?" she asked, uncertainly as if she had to practice most formalities. Maybe that was an alien thing.

"Uh huh," he said, realising how rude he'd been not asking her for her own name all this time. "Do you have one?"

"...Peridot," she answered after another uncertain pause, as if she was embarrassed by it. But Steven liked it, and he let her know what a smile over his shoulder.

"Nice to meet you, Peridot."


	2. Chapter 2

Staring from the hallway at the tall figure shivering and dripping on his couch, cocooned in a beach towel and chattering teeth behind a frown as she clutched her gauntlets, Greg Universe didn't seem as surprised as he should have been to have an alien in his front room, the fractured moonlight outside casting an eerie lime glow around her since she complained about the bright electric lights.

"I'm… not so sure about this, Steven."

"How… Dad, there's an _alien_ in our house!" As Steven squeezed the last of the rain from his hair with his own towel he threw his arms out for emphasis, almost sending the towel flying against a wall. "And look at her, she's helpless! I mean… she is now, at least." Steven thought better than to mention Peridot almost trying to incinerate him within a minute of them meeting.

Even so, Greg didn't seem at all eased at the prospect of their new grumpy house guest. "You say that now, but what about when a whole hoard of her friends show up in giant spaceships to enslave us all? Or worse!" But he tried too hard to make the idea sound likely to happen, so it seemed even he wasn't convinced of himself. Whatever he thought of Peridot herself, humming discordantly to herself, he didn't think she was as dangerous as he was making out.

"Well, that's even more reason to help her," Steven said, watching Peridot gently rub the traces of mud off her boots and gloves. "If she likes us, then if anyone else shows up they won't be scared of us. And anyway… it's the right thing to do. She doesn't have anyone else around but us."

Whatever was on Steven's face, the determined bright spark in his eyes, it made Greg look at Peridot through his son's eyes, at a stranded, confused being who didn't know yet if she could trust her new guardians. He sighed, again marveling at how someone he raised could be so much smarter, so much better with people than him. "I know, son. How about you… go see how she is."

Steven nodded with a grin, approaching the front room slowly and edging into Peridot's line of sight. She noticed him instantly with small, hard eyes, but didn't flinch as he sat opposite her.

"Hey, Peridot." Steven raised a hand at her, a small wave that she greeted with a low hmph. Her hair still hung as tangled yellow drapes around her face, making her look smaller as she hunched in the warmth of her towel.

"As soon as that wretched 'rain' ceases and my enhancers are repaired, I will be leaving," she told him, turning her attention back to scrubbing her gauntlets and rubbing the metal seams, clutching the yellow finger-rods carefully in her other hand.

Steven blinked, though it was hardly surprising that she'd want to leave. But curiosity still nibbled at him, forcing him to ask, "How come?"

"...None of your business," she eventually answered, and the pause made Steven suspicious. Maybe his dad wasn't just being dramatic...

"Well, it's my planet you're on, so… it _is_ my business, kinda." He meant it as friendly as he could manage, a smile practically falling off the side of his face, but Peridot just scoffed and held her gloves closer to her chest, a lifeline that she stared down at past her streaked visor.

"Earth… it's even worse than what I heard," she mumbled. And before Steven could ask what she meant by that, his father returned with a tray of two steaming mugs.

"Uh, I made some hot chocolate." He set the tray down and seemed to flinch back from Peridot as soon as his hands were free. She didn't pay the other human much heed, hardly glancing up at him as he inched away with eyes clamped on her, as if she was a trick of the light that would disappear at the slightest distraction.

"Thanks, Dad," Steven called out as Greg retreated back to the kitchen, taking the closest mug to warm the lingering ache from his fingers. Even if it was summer, there was no such thing as a bad time for hot chocolate.

Peridot eyed the remaining mug cautiously, leaning in to squint at the milky brown drink, twitching her nose and blinking as the steam from it fogged her visor. "It… smells nice," she admitted, slowly taking a hand off her gauntlets to reach out and touch the side of it. The heat seemed to surprise her, making her snap her hand back before the fingers decided to settle around the handle, mirroring Steven hesitantly. "What do I do with it?" she asked.

"Just go like this." Steven blew gently across the liquid, throwing the tiny wraiths of steam away before tipping it back against his mouth. Peridot watched closely, confused, still staring suspiciously down at her drink before taking a tiny sip. Her eyes snapped wide, and Steven was almost expecting her to splutter and choke as he learned the hard way that chocolate was poison to aliens- but she tipped her head back further to gulp it down, humming with what he guessed was delight. She only stopped when the whole cup was drained, and she sighed with a brown streak shining on her top lip. And that was only noticed when Steven giggled at it, prompting her to scowl and wipe the back of her hand against her mouth, then she peered deep inside the mug as if she was wondering where the rest of the drink was.

"So… what kind of alien are you, Peridot?" Steven asked, a thousand other questions all branching off that one all-consuming piece of curiosity.

She glanced up at him with eyes that seemed to permanently be narrowed. "Humans don't know what gems are?"

"Well, yeah, but what we call a 'gem' is probably different from you." Whatever a 'gem' was, it was clear they knew more about humans than they did about them. And he wasn't quite sure how to feel about that.

"Well, it's… the name of my species," Peridot said hesitantly. "From Homeworld. And that's all I'm gonna say."

Even those tiny details were more than he was expecting to get out of her. "Oki doki." He went to drink the rest of his mug, but over the rim of it all he could see was Peridot tipping her own over and frowning when nothing came out.

"Do you want the rest of mine?" he asked, offering his mug to her. It was his favourite one, covered in yellow stars, but he trusted her to be careful with it. Her suspicion was expected at this point, but she accepted it eventually with her gauntlets all but forgotten about by her side.

"You humans are… much friendlier than I thought," she said, almost like a question as she cradled the warm cup and its imprint of stars.

"What did you think we were like?"

"Well… I don't know. We never learned much about you things..." Once again before Steven could ask further, his father re-appeared in the doorway.

"Steven, can I get some help in the kitchen?" It was an innocent enough request, but the slight crack over the surface of his voice made Steven raise his eyebrows.

"Sure, Dad." He stood up and said quietly, "I'll be right back, Peri," before leaving her to drain another mug in relative peace.

In the kitchen, blaring bright after the soft gloom of the living room, Greg leaned against a counter and faced Steven. He sighed, and in that second seemed much older than he was in the harsh light overhead.

"Listen, son… I've met one of her kind before."

Steven blinked so quickly that shapes became blurred in front of him. "You… what?" He was expecting another lecture of alien domination theories, or to be told the oven suddenly caught fire again, but not something like this. And he knew his father wouldn't joke about it, not at least until he'd gotten used to the idea of having an alien under his roof.

"A few of them, actually, but… there was one who was special." Greg sighed again, and a tiny smile was struggling to show itself. "Rose Quartz, was her name."

And it was a name he spoke with nothing Steven had ever heard before, at least not from him. It was from more than just marvel or awe, or the pride of being able to say 'by the way, I met someone from another planet'. Greg had never even spoke of Steven's mother with such reverence, even before she left when he retired from music. "You never mentioned them before…"

Greg nodded, almost regretful. "It was a while before you were born, back when I was first touring as Mr Universe," he explained, shoving himself off the support of the counter with great effort. "I had a concert here in the city, and… Rose was the only one who showed up. She seemed to like the songs a lot. I guess they have different music where she- where _they_ came from." The more he spoke of her the more his smile grew, like something blooming in a cone of sunlight. But something darkened in his eyes, a thought flickering past, and it was gone. "There were another three gems with her, but… I don't think they liked me very much."

"What happened to them?" Steven asked quietly, and that seemed the hardest thing for his dad to explain.

"Well, Rose… she just disappeared one day. Her friends left, and I never saw them again. I always assumed they just went back home. I… never thought I'd see another of them, after all this time." Greg's gaze changed, focusing past the open doorway to the new gem now curled on the couch, exactly where Steven was staring.

"Do you think Peridot would know where Rose went?" The thought excited Steven as much as he thought it would his father, but for once Greg didn't seem very optimistic.

"I dunno… it was a long time ago." He placed a hand on Steven's shoulder, jolting his attention away from Peridot. "Just be careful, son. Even with Rose around, I never learnt a lot about her kind. I don't want you getting yourself into trouble."

"I don't think Peridot wants trouble. I think… she just wants to go home."

Some of the darkness faded from Greg's eyes then, and he put on an easy smile for his son. "Well, until she can… how about we set her up in the barn in the morning? Then she'll have some privacy where we can still keep an eye on her."

Steven knew the barn well, knew how secluded and safe it was, and he was grinning. "Yeah! That's a great idea, Dad!" He almost wanted to rush out and take Peridot right to it, but Greg still had a hand on his shoulder and he squeezed it gently before Steven could dash off.

"But for now, get a good night's sleep. She won't be going anywhere as long as it's still raining." Steven nodded as his dad released him, returning to the living room and pausing at the foot of the steps to see Peridot spread out across the couch, both mugs empty on the table with her eyes closed behind her visor. With her legs drawn up near her chest, the boots poking out under her towel, she seemed much smaller than she was outside. He didn't know if gems slept, but even sleep wouldn't have made her look so peaceful.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, mist and dew heavy on the windows with the sun unveiling the remains of the soggy night, Steven dressed in a rush and almost tripped on the stairs down to see Peridot again. She was smoothing out the kinked strands of her hair, each pass of her fingers smoothing it out and reforming it into the peculiar triangle shape she'd arrived with. The gem in her forehead shone as she styled away, the light itself seeming to manipulate and pull the pale yellow tresses up. Steven watched the silent ritual from the stairs, the creased forehead under her visor and the blue tip of her tongue poking out, until she noticed him standing there and paused suddenly.

"What are _you_ looking at?"

The answer was 'a very grumpy triangle', but Steven thought better than to say that. "Uh… good morning." He reached the bottom of the steps. "Did you have a nice sleep?"

"Gems don't sleep," she curtly replied. "I was just… resting my eyes."

"Whatever you say," Steven said with a bemused laugh as he went to the window, peering out beyond the porch at the sun starting to climb up the sky to bake the damp earth dry.

"The rain's stopped now, so we can outside if you-" Peridot snorted at the suggestion before Steven could finish it, the cracked halves of her visor flashing in the streams of sunlight bathing her as the gem aura faded abruptly from around her hands.

"So I can get pelted with something even worse out of nowhere? I don't think so." She crossed her arms over, but it was a clumsy movement as she seemed to forget she didn't have her gauntlets on.

"It's not so bad outside, especially when it's summer," Steven said as she frowned and shoved her arms down by her sides with her hands balled into fists. Though it was an angry motion, it gave him an idea. "What if I… hold your hand while we're out there?"

Peridot looked at his outstretched hand, fingers wiggling in invitation, almost flinching away like he was about to strike her. But when it was clear he wasn't, she compressed her mouth into a small scowl. "And what would that accomplish?"

"If there's anything mean out there, you won't be alone. I'll always be nearby. And there's something I wanna show you anyway."

"…Which would be?"

"Somewhere for you to stay while you're on Earth. And you could fix your stuff there, too." He gestured to the bulky gloves she'd been resting her head on through the night, the ones she was pulling protectively into her lap again. She held them to her chest as she stood up, the tip of her hair almost grazing the ceiling, and Steven didn't realise she was waiting for him until she asked;

"Well, are we going or not?"

Outside, though it was early with humid mist curling around Steven's sandals, the air was already warm, like a blanket draped over him from all sides. Peridot lingered in the doorway at first, eyeing the scruffy doormat in front of her, squinting up at the clear sky, but decided to follow when it appeared nothing would be jumping down to strike her today. Steven knew the way to the barn, along the beach edge until the sand turned to grass and the dunes became hills, and when he looked back at Peridot he couldn't help smiling at her tentatively sinking her boots into the soft ground, holding her arms out for balance with each step. Her frown seemed a permanent feature of her face by this point, but it didn't dampen Steven's curiosity.

"So, what did you do on Homeworld, Peridot?" He looked back again as he asked, seeing her give him one of her suspicious looks as she tried to shake rivulets of sand off her boots.

"I'm a technician, like every other Peridot," she answered. "What do other _Stevens_ do on this planet?"

"Well… there's only one of me. I mean, humans sometimes share names, but we're all different from each other." It was so easy for him to say and understand it, yet Peridot just blinked blankly at him.

"But… how do you all know what your jobs are?"

"We just do whatever suits us best. Or whatever we're best at doing. And as for me… I'm still kinda trying to decide what I wanna do." Homeschooled around music from birth, it seemed obvious what path was laid out for him, but he still had time to decide if it was one he wanted to walk on.

Peridot was still wrestling with what he told her, the gem flashing on her forehead as she tried to process concepts that clearly didn't exist in her world. "None of that makes any sense," she declared. "Society would crumble in a day if everyone just… did whatever they wanted to do."

Steven shrugged. "Gem society, maybe. But we've done alright so far. Do you like being a technician?"

"Whether or not I like being one is irrelevant. It's the job I was made for. But… I do enjoy it. Better than being a Pearl, at least."

Steven might have asked what a Pearl was, but the hill they just cleared gave a view straight ahead to the barn, and he was running the rest of the way to it with Peridot stumbling behind. Even with her longer legs, she struggled to keep her feet flat on the grass, and almost smacked into Steven's back as she skidded to a stop behind him.

"Here we are!" Steven flourished at the open building spilling out rusty vehicle parts, cluttered with more scrap pieces than a junkyard. "My dad's a bit of a hoarder, so there's a lot of junk around but we can just move it if you want."

Peridot approached the building slowly, looking over the wealth of abandoned steel, deflated tires and all the broken things even Steven couldn't put a proper name to. She moved through the sea of scrap flooding the barn's interior, using her gem as a flashlight to peer up at the hayloft bathed in shadow and dust motes. Before Steven could offer her a ladder to go up she was scaling the nearest wall, walking straight up it as if her boots were glued to the surface. She reached the loft in seconds, peering down at Steven and his awe filled eyes with something like reluctant approval.

"...I suppose it will do," she decreed.

 **xx**

Though Steven had to leave her for the rest of the morning, lest his dad wake up in an empty house and think he'd been kidnapped, he was back at noon with the swollen sun burning down hard. Yet Peridot didn't seem bothered, not even sweating in the heat as she fiddled with scavenged tools on a cleared table outside the barn. Then again, maybe gems just didn't sweat.

"So whatcha doing?" Steven asked, casting around at the rearranged junk piles and leaning on the workbench she'd made for herself. She didn't look up from the gauntlet she was trying to nudge half of a pair of scissors into.

"My current goal is to repair my enhancers. Then I can focus on the primary objective of contacting Homeworld so they can come rescue me." She gave up on the scissors with a grunt, moving onto a screwdriver now for whatever she was trying to do.

And considering he didn't know anything about gem technology, Steven decided against offering help to an expert, only able to say, "Sounds difficult."

Peridot muttered in agreement. "If this planet is as primitive as I think it is, then it will be." She seemed to have more success with the screwdriver, prying the bulky gloves open with a triumphant "AHA!" so the insides were revealed; thin wires and diodes and sparkling things no human could have recognised. Grinning over the cybernetic entrails, her gem seemed to glow brighter as she tested the components between her fingers, like a small star had been stuck inside her head and a shard was poking gem itself made Steven more curious than any else, but he had more important things to be thinking about for now, things that Peridot might not even be able to answer.

"Can I ask you about something, Peridot?"

"You just did."

Though the deadpan answer was sharp, it wasn't exactly a 'no', so he went ahead. "Did you happen to know… a gem called Rose Quartz?"

There was no flash of recognition from Peridot, only a scoff as she pulled out something small to examine it. "There's as many Quartzs as there are Pearls back on Homeworld. You'll need to be a little more specific."

"I mean… a Quartz that was apparently on Earth a while ago."

And it turned out the flash was just delayed, because Peridot dropped the component from frozen fingers as her visor glinted in front of wide eyes. "You mean… the leader of the Crystal Gem rebellion? _That_ Rose Quartz?" It must have been that one, so Steven just nodded.

Peridot stood up from her station, shaking her head and somehow keeping her hair intact. "Where did you hear about her?" she asked, almost demanding to know from the blank steel armouring her tone.

"My dad- uh, Greg told me about her. He said he knew her, and a few others she was with. That… he cared about her a lot."

Peridot gave him a hard appraisal. "Hm. Well, that's a shame considering what happened to her." With that she went right back to work, but Steven couldn't ignore the slight regret in her voice.

"...What happened?"

This time she just glanced up from her glove, curling her top lip. "You don't know?" She shook her head with a sigh. "No, of course you don't. Well, it was a while ago by human standards, before my gem emerged, but the records say she… used her gemstone to destroy the Cluster, before it could destroy Earth."

Steven didn't quite know what she was talking about, what a Cluster was or the true signifigance of gemstones, but the falter of Peridot's usually strong, if sarcastic, tone was enough to tell him the tragedy of Rose Quartz's fate. "She... sacrificed herself for Earth?"

Peridot gave a grunt of confirmation, turning it into a scoff as she flicked her eyes back and forth to her surroundings. "Seeing the place for myself, I can't possibly understand why."

But while she wrapped herself in concentration and bitterness, Steven was trying to work out how to break this news to his dad. All his expectations of Rose being alive in her home, of missing his father as much as he so obviously missed her...Steven was tearing up just thinking of how hard he'd try to hide his heartbreak, to put on a brave face for his son when he was told his true love was just dust now.

So he tried to distract himself with the only thing he could think of, questions and the insatiable curiosity of humanity bubbling up in him. "What was the Cluster?" he asked, forcing the tears away from his eyes.

"I don't see how that matters to you, considering it's doesn't exist anymore." Peridot didn't bother looking up, blind to anything that wasn't glowing and so tiny in her meticulous fingers.

"Can you at least tell me what the Crystal Gem rebellion was?"

She had her tongue stuck out as she worked, and it curled in as she groaned. "Do I look like an encyclopedia to you?"

"No, but you do look a little nerdy," Steven admitted, wondering if her visor was like glasses to complete the illusion. "I think it's cute."

Peridot frowned, narrowing her eyes at him. "Whatever _that_ means… if you must know, the rebellion was a group of prime idiots, all lead by Rose Quartz, who decided Earth was worth trying to save."

"Save from what?"

"Colonisation. The Diamond Authority wanted to turn the planet into a new colony, to grow new gem warriors in-" She cut off as she glanced up again at him, her expression falling when she saw how blank his own was. "You don't understand a word of what I'm talking about, do you?"

Steven shrugged, tugging his shirt with the sun still beating down hard. "Not really, but I like hearing you talk about how your planet works."

"Well, I have better things to do right now than give lectures!" she said sharply, screwing her eyes up as she riveted them on a bundle of wires near the palm of her gauntlet. It wasn't a yell, but Steven still flinched back with eyes cast downwards.

"Sorry…"

Other than the click of metal tools and shuffle of components, there was silence for a few long seconds while Peridot processed his apology. "I… suppose I'd also be curious about humans, so your interruptions are forgiven."

And then Steven was smiling again, because it took effort to stay frowning on such a nice day, with such unique company. "There's one thing you haven't said yet, though."

"Which is…?"

"How did you end up in a meteor?"

Peridot sighed again, but it was a tired sound rather than an annoyed one. "Your guess is as good as mine. I'm _supposed_ to be regenerating in the new Gamma colony near Homeworld, but I wake up to find myself crash landed on a planet a million light years away!" She threw out a hand dramatically to the sky, almost clipping Steven's head before he managed to duck.

"What do you mean, regenerating?" he asked, still ducking slightly in case she did any more gestures.

"I was injured during the colonisation mission. And when a gem needs to repair herself, she retreats into her gemstone until she's fixed," she explained, tapping her own stone gently and then gesturing to the webbed scar across her visor. "Of course i _my/i_ rest was rudely interrupted, so I have to walk around with a giant crack across my eyes. At least they bothered to bury me with my enhancers..."

Steven nodded to himself, slowly piecing together a picture of how a gem like her lived. "Do you think maybe something happened to the colony? Maybe… someone dug you back up and sent you flying through space?"

"Unlikely. For one thing, there would be no reason to do so. Gems emerge automatically when we're fixed."

"So it's all a big mystery?"

"For now, but I'm sure my managers will have answers for me, if not Yellow Diamond herself. All I need to do is let them know I'm in one piece, and they'll come get me." She said it quite confidently, maybe even smugly, like she was already being missed on Homeworld. And if that was the case, she'd want to get home as soon as possible, which meant Steven was just getting in the way.

"I guess I'll let you get on with it, then. I'll be in the house if you need me." He turned to leave, sure that she wouldn't wander or get herself in trouble, but he was just at the foot of the hill when she called out to him.

"Steven?" He turned back to her. "While you're gone, could I perhaps have some more of that… hot chocolate stuff?"

She seemed embarrassed at having to ask, hiding her face slightly as it flared a brighter shade of green. "Wouldn't you rather have ice cream?" Steven called back, conscious that the day was only bound to get hotter.

Peridot looked blankly across at him, abandoning her tools. "...What's ice cream?"

And that was when Steven made it his mission to flag down a truck and get them both some.


	4. Chapter 4

At first Peridot just stared at the cone clasped in her hands, watching it melt a safe distance from her face as she perched on a bench outside the barn. Steven had already finished his own, and he was about to ask if he could have Peridot's before he realised she probably didn't even know what to do with it.

"Uh, Peridot? You're supposed to lick it."

She kept blinking blankly with vanilla dripping down her fingers. "What do you mean, lick?"

"It's like drinking, but… you just stick your tongue out. Like this!" Steven demonstrated, making himself look like a smiling frog, and when Peridot tentatively copied him her blue tongue was stained white in seconds as she devoured what was left of the ice cream. Her curious and soothed smile didn't last very long though, as just a second after the last lick was gone she was clawing into her hair and clutching her head as it bowed towards her knees.

"GAAAH!" She hissed and growled and let the empty cone drop to the ground, kicking against the air and quite nearly clipping Steven's arm as he tried to see what was hurting her.

"Peridot, what's wrong?!"

"My… head… my gem! It hurts… so cold…!" She whined as she clawed at her forehead, gritting and grinding her chilled teeth, rocking back in her seat and almost toppling to the ground if not for Steven reaching out to steady her.

"It's okay!" he said, or so he hoped. "It's just brainfreeze- or, uh… gemfreeze, I guess."

She only whimpered louder at him, squeezing fists against her gemstone, but as the hissing seconds passed so did the ache gripping her, and soon she was left blinking and casting about her gaze as if she was wondering where the pain had disappeared to. And then she was glaring down at Steven's arms still hovering around her, forcing him to pull them back with a sheepish smile.

"And humans endure this for _fun_?" she asked, eyeing the fallen cone like it would come alive and try to stab her.

"It only hurts if you eat too fast," Steven explained. "And even then, it's still tasty, right?'

Peridot frowned, but her tenseness started to melt away. "Well... apart from that unpleasant experience, I suppose I… enjoy ice cream," she admitted, making Steven's smile much wider.

"See, there's lot of stuff to like about Earth!" he said, though he half-expected her skeptical scoff in reply as she pushed herself onto her feet, towering dramatically in her boots.

"Even if I _was_ able to tolerate Earth, I can't possibly stay for any longer than I'm forced to. I have important work to do on Homeworld, Peridot-only work!" She gestured as she made the declaration, throwing her hands up to the sky and wherever Homeworld lay among the light years stretching high above them both. And though her voice was firm and commanding, Steven sensed there was a deep gulch of homesickness hidden underneath it.

"Well... I guess if it's so important, I shouldn't distract you so much," he said, looking down at his hands as his fingers tied themselves together in guilt. He couldn't see the change in Peridot's expression, but the shadow cast by her raised arms fell away and her voice became much softer.

"...I don't mind it, in small doses. I mean… taking breaks will let me think all the clearer when I _am_ working." She hummed, more like a groan, and when Steven looked up again she was standing in front of him with hands on her hips. "I will propose a deal to you, Steven. You can stick around while I'm doing repairs if you manage to be useful… somehow."

Steven's grin was larger than his mouth, and he almost fell over from how quickly he jumped up standing. "I can do that! I don't know a lot about fixing things, but I can get you stuff you might need."

Peridot had a creased expression, carefully doubtful, but with a glance back at where her gloves were flayed open she seemed ready to give him a chance. "Can you find me a conductive strip?" she asked.

"Uh, sure... " Steven took himself into the barn, still clogged with junk and broken things he hadn't seen for years, certain that he'd find something at least similar to what she was looking for. Amidst a pile of snapped tables and chairs he found something that at least fit 'conductive'- a broken lamp with its shade buried somewhere else miles away.

"This should work, right?" he asked, holding up his find. "I mean, it's got wires and stuff in it, so-"

Peridot took one second to look over it before snatching it from his hands. "It'll do." With that she promptly returned to her repairs, prying open the lamp and pulling out its clumped copper innards. And since Steven finally knew when to not interrupt, he resigned himself to digging through the rest of the scrap horde for anything semi-useful, to either him or Peridot.

Ancient broken toys, old clothes eaten away by moths and damp, trinkets that fell apart in his hands and a swarm of dust that refused to die down, the more he pried into the barn's secrets the more disappointed he got.

Until he reached a corner, heaving aside a stiff mattress that hid a desk that was heavy with dust, but otherwise the most pristine thing in the barn. He peered in deeper, but nothing else was there in the sun-glanced shadows. Just the desk, with a single drawer set into it. Steven tugged on the handle, groaning when it proved stubborn before finally popping out with him falling backwards as it landed in his lap. But even dazed and dusty, Steven knew what the tiny glint inside the drawer was.

"Huh…" He took out the ring, its gold band slightly too small for his own fingers but shimmering with a single jewel set within the metal, and turned it around in front of his squinting eye. If he didn't recognise it well enough, the engraving inside was one he couldn't forget. "I thought Dad said he lost you…"

"What is it, Steven?" Peridot had pulled herself away from her workbench, if only enough so she could see Steven picking himself up with the ring held between his thumb and forefinger.

"Just something I found. Something that my Dad must have hidden away…" He held it up as Peridot came closer, letting her see it for herself. She squinted so much that her eyes became thin lines, before snapping open like springs as she flinched backwards.

"Is that… a diamond?!" she asked, hushed with a terrified awe. "You trapped a mighty diamond in that little bit of gold?!"

Steven was the one left confused for once, until he realised how strange it must have been to see one of her kind encased in jewellery. "Uh… it's not a gem like you are, Peridot. It's not alive. It's just a pretty rock. When two humans really love each other, they usually give each other rings like these."

Peridot was still wary as she came close again, squinting at the harmless gem which probably wasn't even a real diamond. She took it between her own fingers, prodding the jewel and feeling the inside of the metal. "So… are there organic species that can be used as decoration?"

"Maybe," Steven said in a laugh. "You know more about other species than me."

As she kept scanning it, something else took hold of her curiosity. "And… what's love?" she asked, and for the first time Steven had no answer ready for her. He had to speak slowly to let his mind catch with his mouth.

"It's like… when you have a friend, but you care about them so much that you want to spend your whole life with them. At least, that's what I always thought…" Looking at that tiny symbol in Peridot's grip only made him all the more aware of the very real possibility that his father had been lying since he was a child, that there was no love between him and his mother anymore, wherever she was, but it also made him notice the confusion still sharp and bright in her skewed stare. "You… have friends, don't you, Peridot?"

She shook her head quickly, shuffling her expression so it was defiant. "Of course I do! Why, other Peridots all over Homeworld beg to be assigned with me on missions! And all my managers agree that I'm a competent and efficient worker!"

"They're not really friends, though," Steven said, though he didn't want to ruin her sudden confidence. "Aren't there… any other gems you like spending time with? When you're not working?"

Just as quickly as it came, Peridot's cockiness dissolved like foam in the sea. "I'm… never not working. I've never even had the chance to fuse with another gem…" She was rolling the ring between her fingers as she trailed off, and she promptly dropped it back into his hand before swiftly turning back to her workbench. Steven looked after her, wondering what it meant to fuse and why she sounded so hollow at not getting to do it.

"I guess humans really _are_ different from gems…" He dropped the ring into a deep pocket, and though it wasn't heavy it made every step a little harder for him, even if they were towards Peridot and her compelling, almost magnetic aura of loneliness. She was back in her trance of repairs, barely noticing him standing next to her and eyeing her work, but there was one thing on her mind that drew her out of the focus.

"If love is so important to humans, why would your Greg throw away a vital component of it?"

Steven opened his mouth, realised again he didn't quite know what to say, before eventually settling on just the cold facts. He felt like Peridot would appreciate them more. "He and my Mom were engaged, but they broke up a little after I was born. When I asked him why, he always just got quiet and said she wasn't the right kind of person for him. Maybe… maybe all that time he was still in love with Rose Quartz…" And it was like a missing piece had been found down the back of the couch, slipping into the mystery of Greg Universe and snapping into the place where Rose had been all these years, preserved in his memories and heart if nothing more. Though Peridot only hummed at the mention of Rose, Steven knew he had to ask her something only a gem could know.

"Do you think… Rose loved my dad back?"

Peridot's reaction was less than sympathetic, more like he'd just told a joke that managed to bridge their culture barriers somehow. "Ha! The chances of a gem falling in love with a _human_ are as likely as a moon falling out of orbit. They can't even fuse together!"

She was still laughing, muffled but bitter sounds, and the only thing that stopped Steven collapsing from a mighty sense of grief, perhaps one inherited from his father, was the perfect chance to ask the other question he needed answered. "What _is_ fusing?"

Peridot had to wait until her giggles died down to stray snorts before she could answer. "It's only what makes gems the most successful species in the galaxy. Two gems, or even more, can fuse through a dance that creates a new, ultra-powerful being that can destroy a planet in one solar cycle!" She threw her arms out in another little display that almost saw Steven being whacked in the face with a wrench, though he ducked down in time and only stood back up when her burst of enthusiasm faded with her arms going limp again. "Or… so I've heard. Like I said, I've never gotten the chance to actually do it…"

She nervously rubbed the back of her neck, and likewise Steven blinked with his head tilted. "...Why would you want to destroy a planet, Peridot?"

She froze, her hand snapping away and hanging there like a trapped bird. "Well, not _all_ fusions are like that, but… it'd just be nice to see what it's like." She shrugged and mumbled by the end of the confession, but then had the hovering hand slap herself back to reality. "But there's no point wishing for things, especially now. Space doesn't just give you what you want because you ask nicely. That's why it's up to me to get these blasted things working again." She snapped the casing of the first gauntlet closed at that, shoving her hand through it and shifting her elbow back and forth.

Steven didn't quite know why, because he was thinking of something else that had him holding his chin. "Did you say… gems fuse through dancing?"

"You clearly heard me say so," Peridot said curtly, though not putting much effort into it. The gauntlet diagnostics absorbed too much of her attention, so much that she didn't see the thoughtful glint in Steven's eyes as the low sun poured its last rays over him, or see him leaving until he called his goodbye.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Peridot. Have a good night!"

"...You too, Steven," she said quietly, though not quite out of his earshot.


	5. Chapter 5

Greg was in the kitchen, busy with burgers, as Steven launched himself through the front door, only panting slightly from his sprint home. "You look like you had a good day," he beamed.

"Yeah, Peridot had ice cream for the first time!" Steven stood beaming in the doorway, flushed from his run and the heat of dinner sizzling. "And then I was helping her fix her alien things, and she told me about her planet and-" He paused when his flailing fingers brushed against the slight bump in his pockets, one he'd forgotten about until he pulled it out by its gold band.

"And… I found this. In the barn." He held the ring up between his thumb and forefinger, the gem much duller out of the glaring sun, and watched as his father came to a very reluctant understanding.

"...Oh."

"The same ring you said you lost?"

"Yeah, the… exact same." Greg slowly approached his son, taking the engagement ring in his own hand. Whether he was surprised to see it again or berating himself at not hiding it better, Steven had a suspicion to why he looked so sad.

"Did you leave Mom because of Rose Quartz, Dad?" he asked quietly. Greg blinked, shook his head quickly as he held the ring to his chest.

"No, no, I… son, life was hard when I lost Rose. But it was way after that when I met your mother. And I loved her too." He placed his free hand on Steven's shoulder, as if he could focus the truth like a laser through his bones.

"...Why did she leave, then?" Steven asked, silently wondering why he'd never asked himself that before. By contrast Greg looked like he'd asked himself that far too much, as he sank down in the nearest chair lest he collapse under the weight of the truth he had to let out.

"She… well, she never told me. But I guessed... it was cause she only cared about me as Mr Universe. I retired after you were born, and… when the fame died away, she didn't want to stick around." He shrugged, unable to lift his head up as the ring precariously dangled off the end of his finger.

"You never told me that before," Steven said, still so quiet over the sound of dinner still sizzling away in the background, probably burning but beyond the care of either of them.

"...I didn't want to upset you. Thought I could keep it to myself," Greg admitted, heaving himself back up with regret in his lungs. "But… you're old enough now to know the truth. You know I'd never lie to you... right, Steven?"

His hand was back on Steven's shoulder, the other one holding the ring out towards him, and Steven made himself smile as he took it back. "I know, Dad."

Both father and son exchanged sad smiles, Steven's still fresh and raw while Greg's was weary after so long spent hiding it from view. The silent understanding only broke when Greg finally noticed the smoke pouring out from the stove in the absence of a fire alarm.

"Or hey, maybe she just didn't like my cooking," he quipped, laughing to fool himself as Steven peered closer at the ring, and the clear stone inside it.

"Do you know what kind of gem is in it?" he asked. "Peridot thought it was a diamond-"

Greg laughed again, much more genuine this time as he plated up the charred burgers. "I wish… nah, it's just a white quartz. Your mom wanted a pink one but, what do you know? They were sold out when I went to buy it." He handed Steven a plate as the boy pocketed the ring again, pulling himself up the stairs- but pausing just before reaching the top.

"Hey, Dad… can I borrow some of your old tapes tomorrow?" he called down.

"Of course, son. What for?"

"I... just think Peridot might like them." Steven bit into the burger, ignoring the hard crust of burned meat around it as he looked forward to tomorrow.

 **xx**

Steven was still rubbing sleep from his eyes when he found Peridot at the barn the next scalding morning, looking like she hadn't slept at all- because she hadn't, as he remembered a few seconds after spotting her and the meticulously sorted junk piles all around her. He didn't know how she'd managed to organise such a horde, but even from a distance he could see everything either precisely stacked or carefully clumped together. Her hair, or what he assumed was hair, frizzed out limply from its usually uniform triangle, almost falling right over her visor as she knelt over her workspace like someone defusing a bomb. She didn't even look up as Steven approached, set down the guitar and tape deck he'd carried up with him.

"How's it going, Peri?" He seated himself at the edge of a wood pile, a mess of snapped chairs and table legs propping him up, while under his sandals wires and cables made a snaking carpet that led far into the barn.

"You know full well my name is Peridot, abbreviations aren't necessary," she snapped, throwing her head back with a sharp breath and a growl at the back of her throat. "And it would be going a lot faster if I could find that Diamond-damned focusing reflector…" Peridot clenched her fingers and stamped across the tiny free spaces she'd allowed between cables, casting the hard cracked glint of her visor left and right while Steven leafed through a smaller clutter of random pieces, fishing out the remains of a compact mirror and squinting at his broken reflection.

"...You mean this?" he asked, the realisation striking just as Peridot's fingers snatched it from his hand.

"Yes, _that_." She marched back to her table, bent over so her back obscured what she was doing. All Steven could see was sparks showering over her tense shoulders and the fizzling glow of something not from this world, and when he tried to get a closer look Peridot just moved herself around with her arms covering the workings of her gauntlet.

"Don't you humans have anything better to do than get in the way?" she grunted.

"Well... not me. Not really." Steven shrugged, not wanting to dwell on the lack of friends Beach City had to offer. "But I like hanging out with you. I wanna make sure you get home safely."

Peridot scoffed out of habit. "Oh please, I'm not a Kindergarten-fresh gem..." But it lacked scorn, and she didn't say anything else as she soldered the finishing touches. Sure enough, a short minute later she flourished a gauntlet-encased arm out with more drama than most humans expressed in one lifetime. The floating fingers hovered close to the shining palm, flexing one by one as her hesitant smile bloomed into a proud and manic grin.

"Aha… AHAHAHA! IT WORKS! THE MIGHTY PERIDOT, THE CROWN JEWEL OF HOMEWORLD IS THE RULER OF EARTH TECHNOLOGY!" She thrust the augmented arm towards the sky, catching the early morning light in her fingers as she squealed. Her gem blazed like a star in her forehead, glittering brighter than ever, and her messy hair flew out like a mane of yelllow plasma around her. Steven had never seen her so alien before... or so happy, and his face hurt from smiling back at her.

"Nice one, Peridot!" His praise seemed to jolt her out of the trance, blank eyes blinking behind the visor as she dropped her arm in a sudden wave of self-consciousness.

"Yes, well... I suppose you helped as well," she muttered, scowling as her hair started to collapsed over her face, making her comb it back into place with her floating fingers. Once her vision was clear she fitted the other gauntlet to her free arm, testing the digits on that as Steven flicked through the tape deck for a suitable song.

"This calls for a celebration!" He sprang back up as the deck clicked, blasting out a rough scratch of guitar and the unmistakable wail of his father's youth. He'd heard it so many times before that he moved by instinct, every bone in his body thrumming to the tune and making him look completely ridiculous- at least to Peridot, as she looked on in utter bafflement.

"What is that? Are you… _dancing_?"

"Yep! Don't you have dancing on Homeworld?" Steven scuffed his sandals on the ground, turning to face her and almost bursting out in laughter at her disbelief bordering on disgust.

"Well, of course we do, but it's a lot more sophisticated than that… random human flailing!" Her fingers almost flew apart as they swept all over him, eyes wide enough to break past her visor. "What's the point of it? Organics can't even fuse together!"

"We don't dance to fuse, Peridot. We just do it cause it's fun!" Steven let one side of his body move along to the chorus while the other stretched a hand out towards her. "Come on, give it a try. If you don't like it, I'll just dance by myself."

She shifted her puzzlement to the hand offered towards her, squinting at the fingers as if she didn't recognise them now that her gauntlets were back in place. "I've… never even done a fusion dance before," she said quietly, twisting and twirling her digits together, her gem glowing dull like it was blushing.

"Like I said, don't dance to fuse," Steven said, wiggling his fingers again at her. "Just… move how you want to the music."

Peridot still hesitated, twitching the yellow rods as if they were trying not to grab his palm as she coughed into them. "Well, I'd… need to take my vertical enhancers off first-"

"You mean your boots?" Steven asked as she knelt down, unlatching something on the bulky green stilts around her calves, never thinking they could come off before.

"If that's what you _humans_ call them..." Peridot pried her leg free of the shoe, almost knocking herself on her butt as she forced it off. The furrow of her visor stopped Steven from giggling, and her second attempt was much more graceful. Her jumpsuit seemed to extend over her feet, pointed green pads that wobbled on the ground as she tried to stand up, holding her gauntlets out for balance. Only when she wasn't about to topple did she notice how Steven stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time again.

"...What?"

"You're the same size as me!" he said, beaming as he stood closer to her and measured where her hair ended against his own head. Sure enough, the two heights were level with each other, and Steven was no longer craning to look up at her. It made the skeptical glare she had not as effective as it should have been, not when she looked so cute now.

"And your point is?" she asked, gauntlets on her hips and glowing under her palm, reminding him that she could now blast him to ashes in a second if she wanted to. He shook his head free of any dangerous thoughts like that, listening for the tape fading into a new song, a slower ballad that would be perfect for Peridot's first dance.

"Just copy what I do. You'll get the hang of it," he said, finally taking her hand with the rods hesitantly wrapping around his wrist, like she was as scared of letting go as she was of taking hold. Her confidence didn't improve with her tight grip on his other hand, still squinting hard beneath her visor with its bright glare hiding her expression from Steven. But he could tell, underneath the quaking shell of hesitancy and fear, she was excited. He could feel the electric current winding around her palm, more than just the gauntlet's circuitry fizzling under his fingers. Most of all he could feel her digits tapping against his skin, slowly easing into the tune of the music around them. If he listened close he could swear she was humming... or maybe that was just what he hoped to hear.

Shaking his head again, Steven started slow. He stepped to one side, then the other, slow swipes across the sound with his sandals. He saw why Peridot removed her boots as she stumbled to keep up, holding on tighter as she tried to match his moves. Her head tilted as she followed, waving left and right like she couldn't control it. Steven wondered if she was just trying to catch the notes in her ears, if she had them, and he let one hand go when she fell into the rhythm.

"See? It isn't so hard!" He beamed across at her, trying to take the edge off her persistent frown. She glared at her feet as they plodded along, as if they weren't doing what she wanted them to. He thought she was about to try and kick them, or something, but it seemed she managed to get used to the robotic footwork. She tried to synchronise her free arm with her feet, quick snapping movements swiping at the air in time with the music. From just watching it was clear that she didn't have bones, or anything like human anatomy in her. She moved too quickly, too instantly with hardly a blur of her limbs, sliding across the ground like it was coated in butter. Steven didn't even try to copy, releasing her other arm and just stepping back to watch the music completely absorb her. The only constant in her moves was the near-blinding beam of her gem, blinking into different places like a chorus of constellation flitting all around him. Steven's focus was so riveted that he didn't notice when the song ended, not until Peridot realised it as she froze herself next to him; arms hovering around him like she was almost planning to slam into him at the last second. Her gem dimmed, but the afterglow still burned bright above her sparkling eyes. She pulled herself back, so strangely slow after seeing her dash so quickly before, gauntlets hanging limp near her chest.

"That was... fun?" She was so unsure of what happened that she didn't know if she enjoyed it or not.

"Was it?" Steven prompted, forcing her to answer it herself.  
"...Yes. I suppose it was," she admitted, glancing back down as Steven smiled. He sat down heavily on a mountain of thick cables; limbs sagging just from watching such a display, feet aching as if he'd been trying to dance just like her.

"I don't think anyone around here can dance like that, Peridot," he sighed, wiping his forehead as she tried to build her walls back up. "It was like you were a cool alien robot, teleporting everywhere! Like, woosh, woosh!" He hissed out sound effects as he tried to simulate her dance with his hands, snapping them through the air while Peridot went frozen again. "You should teach me how to do that before you need to leave for Homeworld!"

Peridot didn't scoff, or sigh, or do anything except blink and hang her digits limp in the air, like they could feel something invisible in front og her. "Teleport... teleport pad... THAT'S IT!" She threw her arms out and was already bounding off in the distance by the time Steven noticed she was leaving.

"Wha-? Peridot, where you going?" His face hit flat on the cabled ground as he tried to hurry after her.

"I must return to my landing site! At once!" she called back, not waiting for him to catch up as he scrambled to strap his guitar to his back, skidding to snatch up her boots as he panted after her. She ran almost as fast as she danced.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Steven managed to catch up to Peridot she was already digging through the charred remains of her vessel, which looked like it had been scavenged clean by the curious. Whoever else had seen the meteor land those long days ago, they at least waited until daytime to go investigating (else Steven would have heard about a green gremlin on the loose by now).

"What... are you... looking for, Peridot?" He bent over gasping as she lobbed rocks and dirt over her shoulder, combing her gauntlets through the debris like a miner in overdrive.

"If this was able to carry my augments, it should also have- AHA!" She sprang up with something shining in her hand, the other one braced on her hip while she pounded the ground with her leaping feet. "My relic pulser!"

Steven peered at it over her shoulder, having to look past the bulky boots clutched in his arms. "What d'sit do?"

Peridot whirled on him in a frenzy of excitement, gripping the remote like a lifeline as she hurriedly tapped its buttons. "It reveals where gem-built structures are on a planet! And I know for a fact Earth had at least two Kindergartens installed somewhere..." The device blipped twice, and Peridot's eyes became stars that almost broke past the guard of her visor. Still stamping with excitement, she was about to climb back out of the meteor crater when she paused and doubled back to Steven.

"Oh, almost forgot-" She took her boots from Steven before he lost the strength to hold them up, refitted them and held another arm up to the sky. Her gauntlet clicked as her floating fingers spread themselves out, lengthening and narrowing to become a set of rotors above her, idly spinning as she looked over at Steven.

"Well, are you coming or not?"

Steven snapped out of his awe, something that he still hadn't gotten used to despite how often he felt it around Peridot, and cautiously stepped closer. "Aren't I a little… _big_ to-?"

"Nonsense, I've carried sediment analysers heavier than one human!" Peridot deflected, as if insulted at his fear of sending them crashing down with any attempt at flight. With that in mind, Steven tried to share in her confidence only to be met with another issue.

"Uh, where do I…?" He gestured around her, indicating that there wasn't exactly any handlebars around to hold onto. Not that she seemed concerned as she viciously shook her head, hair flying back and forth as if on a spring.

"Never mind that, just hold on to me already! The sooner we get there, the sooner I'll be home!" Steven wasn't about to argue with a tone like that, so he relied on his guitar strap to keep him secure as he pulled it over Peridot's shoulder, looping his arms around them as she scowled, and prayed he really wasn't as heavy as he looked.

He was, but Peridot didn't seem hampered at all as she took off. The ascent was slow, but in just a few seconds Steven found himself squeezing his eyes shut as he tightened his hold around Peridot. She kept her attention on the relic pulser in her free hand as her other one steered them both through the static, humid air.

"You don't have to keep your eyes closed, you know. I won't drop you," she said after a few minutes of trembling flight.

Steven hadn't been worrying about that, but the legs secured around Peridot's waist squeezed tighter just in case. "You promise?" he asked.

"Yeah yeah, whatever." He felt her shrug under his arms, and it was still a while before he braved the heights and cracked an eye open.

Stretching out below him were not the dusty dunes and bleached wooden shingles he'd grown up with. He almost didn't know what to call the scene until he realised they were hanging over mountains; a jagged welt running wide wherever he dared to look, vast chasms of granite grey among rare rivers of green left scarred by the sun. The mountain tops were so close he almost feared he'd graze his sandals against them; some peaks so thin that he thought a strong enough wind, like the one whipping against his watering eyes, could easily topple them. With their fragile patches of green struggling to reach the clouds, these mountains reminded him of Peridot herself.

"Wow… can anyone else see us?" Steven had to yell over the whistle of nature's ghost through the mountains' cracks, and Peridot craned her head away from his shriek.

"This high up and this far out, I would hope not," she muttered, flashing a glare over her shoulder at Steven before promptly turning attention back to the sawtooth horizon that didn't seem to intimidate her at all- and almost dropping her pulser as she jolted forwards with a gasp. "There it is!"

Steven almost crashed into her hair as she violently increased her speed, but with his eyes as slits again he could see a break in the stonescape ahead of them, a sea of sand that seemed to flood out from the mountains and paint the rest of the land as a barren desert.

Peridot had a different name for it as she descended, still mumbling as she clutched the pulser in her trembling gauntlet. "The Beta Kindergarten… still here after all this time."

Steven assumed she didn't mean the kind kids in Beach City went to, but waited until they both set shaking feet back on solid ground before asking. "What _is_ a Kindergarten?"

Now released from his hold Peridot scanned the sandstone dunes and canyons ahead of them, as if in disbelief as she walked slowly onwards. "It's where gems were created on Earth, before the Rebellion shut them down," she explained absently.

"Other gems like you?" For once Steven wasn't stumbling to keep up with her, sharing her almost fearful curiosity of the empty amber hills rising up like pitted walls around them, growing taller the further they ventured.

"No, no… Quartzes," Peridot corrected. "Warrior kinds. Those were the important ones back then."

Now Steven started to lag behind as he noticed more than just stone lining the sunken canyon, metal beasts like huge drills perched on legs looming over him. Even seeing them from a distance didn't prepare him for turning the corner ahead and seeing one lying dead on its side, splattered in rust and creaking on its hinges as Peridot knelt and examined it.

"Never seen an Injector this old," she mumbled, pushing herself back up with a hand on a patch of rust. "They were used to inject gem seeds into the ground of colonies, until we found it was more efficient to just grow them in tunnels."

Even knowing what it was didn't make Steven any less anxious around the spiralling drill still glinting sharply in the sunlight. He shook his head and tried to think of something else.

"How come no humans have found this place?" he asked.

"It's hidden," Peridot answered, spinning her fingers to shake the rust from them. "Static energy field makes it look like empty space to anyone who's not a gem." With one last dismissing look at the abandoned Injector husk, she turned attention back to her relic pulser.

"Of the two Kindergartens that were installed, one of them had warp pads for supervisors to go back and forth to Homeworld. If I'm lucky, there should be one-" She cut herself off with another bout of joy, a gasp just before she went pelting onwards again. Steven had the feeling that he should have been used to it by now, but he was still coughing on the dirt she kicked up in her wake.

"Yes! Yes yes yes, I knew it! It's-!" She fell to the dust, grasping for whatever she saw in the gritty clouds, but when Steven eventually reached her, the air cleared to show her kneeling with only a scratched panels and frayed wires cradled in her lap. Behind her lay a graveyard of similar objects, some half buried by centuries of neglect.

"It's… broken. All of them. Electronics just… decayed after so long." She kept her head bowed down, away from Steven, but her voice reflected more disappointment than could have been seen behind her visor. "I should have been expecting as much…" She fell back heavily on her rear, old dust from another era flying up around her and covering her limp hair.

All Steven could do was sit down beside her, watching her forlorn attempts to brush the smashed pieces clean and hope they just repaired themselves with enough care. "Can't you fix it?"

With what he'd seen her do with nothing but junk it seemed a reasonable question, but Peridot didn't even scoff so much as sob packed into the cracks of her voice. "Without Flask Robonoids helping, I can only try."

And with that possibility in her head, her visor lit up with a thousand more of them all crowding for attention. At least, that's what Steven thought when a rapid shift in Peridot's mood had her pacing back and forth between the deep chasm walls, reciting a manic script to herself.

"I could try re-engineering an Injector, but there's no telling what would happen once it's reactivated, or… or I could make some kind of diagnostic tool from my pulser, or-"

If not for Steven's hand on her shoulder, she might have passed the whole day before finished her list. He'd seen it before, the sudden flood of adrenaline in the depths of exhaustion. In the days of his father pulling all nighters on songs, those bursts of energy were all that ensured breakfast was made before Greg eventually collapsed. And even if gems didn't sleep, he could see from how dim Peridot's gemstone was as she glared suspiciously at him that she was on the verge of something similar- or worse.

He dropped his hand slowly, only holding her attention with his eyes. "Hey, Peri… you've been working non-stop all day. Maybe it's time to take a break."

Her glare softened, not as reluctantly as usual, and when she looked away it was replaced with blinking bewilderment. "I can't… I can't rest." She shook her head, the smooth peak of her hair now starting to split into stressed frizz. "Not when I'm so close. I'm a Peridot, this… this is what I was made for. Fixing broken things... "

She reached out again for the warp pad remains, her lifeline to home, but Steven took hold of her nearest hand to bring her back. The floating fingers hung a limp grip on his palm, but didn't pull away as he made her face him.

"Whether or not you decide to rest, it's still gonna be broken when you come back," he said gently, paraphrasing one of his dad's favourite lectures. "But would you rather keep going, too exhausted to know what you're doing? Or slow down just for an hour or two, giving yourself time to eventually do it well?"

Peridot still loosely held his palm, even as he spoke nonsense to her. "But… it's not my job to rest," she said quietly.

"From what I've seen, you're already good at your job, Peri. There's no shame in leaving it for a while." Steven let her gauntlet fall back to her side, his point made as well as he could manage. Peridot looked behind her, at the final hurdle between Earth and her Homeworld, hovering digits spinning and clenching like it was taunting her.

"...Alright." Her decision sounded forced, but there was no hiding the weariness in her limbs as she let herself fall back down. "Just for an hour. Don't let me waste any more of the day."

Again Steven took a place next to her, pulling his guitar off his back to let him sit more comfortably. "No such thing as a day wasted."

He tried not to smile too much as, for the first time since she landed, Peridot let herself relax. Her visor cloaked closed eyes, shoulders sinking and hair almost falling flat down her back. Most of all her whole body seemed to fade, going transparent as the sun dipped down behind the walls of the Kindergarten and the world.

"Do you… have any more music?" she asked, voice as distant from this planet as she wanted to be.

"I left the tapes at the barn," Steven lamented as he pulled his guitar across his chest. "But… my dad taught me how to play some of them. Do you wanna hear?"

It might have just been a trick of the draining light, but he thought he saw Peridot smile. "I won't stop you."

And with that verdict, her gem started shimmering and her body turned white, as if it was bleeding her colours away, and then eventually her whole self. Among the thud of empty gauntlets and hollow boots hitting the ground, the bright green gem only barely missed with Steven's hand snapping out to catch it.

Seeing Peridot so up close, in her natural form, was more than surreal. The glow had retreated by now, the stone warm and smooth in his palm as he passed a thumb over its surface. Even with sunset bruising the sky's light, the peridot managed to take that dying light and spin shining threads of pure green brilliance from it. This gem put his father's engagement ring, put any diamond found in Earth's crust to shame. Peridots, and the people inside them, shone brighter than anything short of stars.

That gave Steven the perfect song choice ("Stars Are Just Space's Pimples", one of Greg's personal favourites), only for him to realise he'd dropped his guitar pick somewhere, probably in the mountains rearing up miles behind him.

"Ah damn…" A frantic search of his pockets came up with nothing but old gum and pennies, and unless he wanted to try and dismantle ancient alien technology there was nothing he could improvise with. Nothing in his hands but Peridot's gem, sharp triangle edges digging into his skin as he palmed it… and realised with regret that it was the perfect shape for a guitar pick.

"I dunno if you can hear me in there, Peridot… but I hope you're okay with this." After all, she'd asked him for music, surely she wouldn't mind…

Even with that reasoning, Steven had to summon up a wealth of courage before he could make himself strum with the gem, bracing for a slap to the face or shrieks of fury in his ears… but nothing came. Nothing but the light wind and the vibration through the gem to his fingers hit against his skin, and the only sound in his ears was the thrumming lilt of a chord struck with precision. He'd be lucky to get a note that rich even with his favourite pick, but as he pushed the limits of his boldness (and Peridot's patience) he kept strumming perfectly over and over again. As long as he knew where to put his fingers on the neck, where to hold down strings and when to release, Peridot turned a simple chorus into a piece of art.

One song after another, the chasm making them echo all around before escaping out to the darkening sky, Steven almost forgot where he was, who he was with and what he was even doing. An hour passed like a cadence, yet Peridot didn't come out. Either she was just as tired as she looked, or she was as content as Steven to stay where she was.

"I never really said so before, but… I thought you were a really great dancer," he said to an audience he wasn't sure was even listening. "Whoever gets to fuse with you will be one lucky gem."

As he finished the final song in his head, only now feeling the ache in his fingers and the sting of his spine from so long leaning over the guitar, he worked the pain away from one hand while holding Peridot up with the other. All the scuffs against strings hadn't made a dent in her gleam, and the moon's reflection shone green with envy. Steven spoke quietly half from his own weariness, half from knowing it didn't matter whether or not he'd be heard.

"I know you don't like Earth much, maybe just cause you're homesick- I know I'd want to get home if I suddenly woke up on an alien planet one day. But I hope I made things a little better for you, while you were here, even if it was just with some dumb songs. If you were a human, or I was a gem… I'd like to think we could be friends."

However long she'd been resting for, Peridot chose now to wake up, burning white in Steven's hand and forcing him to let go of her as her gem hovered, body reforming in a green-tinted corona in front of him. Once again without augments, brought down to Steven's size and utterly unable to hide the distress in her eyes… yellow eyes like sad suns. No visor to hide behind now, no boots to let her cower in the clouds, not even gauntlets to stop her hands shaking. And still she looked so faint, moonlight stabbing through like she was a ghost.

Steven's most immediate fear was that he accidentally hurt her while strumming, already with an apology brewing in his throat, but Peridot reminded him of something much grimmer before he could get it out.

"...You asked about the Cluster once," she said, every word a sigh light years in the making. "If you still want to know… I'll tell you."

Against all meager and better judgement he had, Steven nodded once.


	7. Chapter 7

Peridot didn't speak at first, after she refitted her boots and gloves. Instead she just walked, a slow and grimly patient amble through the moonlit chasm. The further they ventured the more often shadow-swollen clouds liked to drift in front of the moon, and soon Steven was left having to probe ahead for rocks before he could take a step forward. Peridot seemed to know exactly where she was going, carving a path onwards through nothing but alien instinct, but she let her gem shine brighter and become a beacon for Steven to follow. And with the new green light over everything he could see the chasm narrowing further, the edges pitted with cracks and gouges with piles of stone and weathered rock bleeding out of them.

The whole place looked condemned and forbidden, even with no more grisly Injectors in sight, and the canyon only narrowed more and more until he could feel its walls scraping his arms as they shivered, intent on trapping him. Even Peridot slowed, maneuvering herself slowly through the hair-thin maze until the way ahead was a sink of pure black rather than just a slither. But rather than lunge for the open air, Peridot stopped before it like it was an abyss.

"Stay here for now," she said over her shoulder. "I… need to make sure…" There was a hiss as she pulled herself into the empty space, the light from her gem starting to blind now as it chased whatever darkness ahead away- and whatever Peridot found in its place left her shaking as she wrenched herself away from it.

"Peridot, are you okay?" Steven took hold of her shoulders, shocked at how cold she felt even with the chill in the evening. The glow from her gem almost completely fizzled out, and she yanked her visor down hard to hide her eyes again as she pulled away.

"Steven, what you're about to… what I'm about to show you is something no gem should have to see. I don't know how it will affect humans, or if you'll even understand, but-"

Steven stopped her with another touch on her shoulder, before she could wilt and ramble any further. "You don't have to show me if it's that bad."

Still shielding her eyes, Peridot hovered her fingers over his hand and considered the offer, before shaking her head. "I… No. I should see it for myself. No matter how bad it is." She removed Steven's hand, but kept hold of it as she turned back to the scarring gulf waiting for them. Rather than rely on her gem for sight, she stretched her other hand out and let a beam bloom from her palm. The cone of faint light reached out far, so far that mist clung to the edges of it, but it was only when Steven ventured into the light that he realised what it was illuminating.

Under his sandals, the whole world dropped away to a crater studded with glittering shards. So deep was the pit that Peridot's light couldn't find the bottom, all it could do was highlight the tiniest glints strewn all around it. It was like staring down at a night sky, making Steven dizzy even when he stepped away from the edge to stand safely by Peridot's side. Still holding the torch of her palm aloft, she let her gem shimmer again with something forming out of the light. The projection hovered over the great crater, shapes outlined in a sharp green glow, and Steven watched as something monstrous was slowly pieced together by Peridot as she explained.

"The Cluster is… well, _was_ a collection of broken gem shards fused together, in the center of the Earth. In a way… it was a gem graveyard. A consequence of the Crystal Gem rebellion, made up of all the warriors who were shattered in the fighting. This crater is where it would have emerged from."

She said it so numbly, like she was just giving a history lesson, but Steven could tell she was just damming up whatever emotion might have leaked out as she remade the event. The Cluster, a deadly mantle in the Earth, brimmed with the jagged edges of dead gems, millions of them all glued back together into something so awful that Peridot didn't even try to show it to him. Just as the Cluster's mutated gem started to warp and try bringing itself to life, she shut it down with a harsh sigh, leaving them alone again at the site of its demise. And looking down again at the abyss, Steven only then realised that the sad lights below were all that was left of the shattered gems. They were all that Rose Quartz left of them, if she really did destroy the Cluster.

"All those broken gems… Rose Quartz did all this?"

"Not all of it," Peridot whispered back, voice as cracked as her brethren littered below them. "But like I said, Quartzes are warriors. Fighting is what they're made for… even if it's against other gems." She started skirting the edge of the pit, a whole new chasm within one, holding out her hand just to stop her tumbling into the mass grave. "The Roses were a special kind of warrior," she went on. "They could heal broken gems on a battlefield. But on the scale of the Cluster, it would have been impossible to do without destroying the planet.

By going to the mantle of the Earth, where the Cluster was, Rose Quartz fused her own gemstone with all the shattered ones. She actually reformed them all, but… at the same time, she destroyed them." She spoke slowly enough that when she said all that she had to distract herself, they'd made it to the other side of the crater where a lip of rock lifted them higher up. From the new vantage it only looked more endless than before, sucking away all the light the gem shards had left to give.

"All this death for a planet like Earth..." Peridot sat on the crest of rock, knees pulled tight to her chest as she stared down at the graveyard.

"...I'm sorry, Peridot." It was all Steven could say, lost on how to ease the pain weighing her down so heavily. But just the sound of his voice seemed to perk her head up, giving her strength to push herself back to her feet.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," she said firmly, convincing herself of it more than anything else. "All of this was before our times. It's all in the past… gems don't like to think about the past. Too many mistakes back there. It's why Sapphires are so precious… they can see into the future."

"There's nothing wrong with mistakes, though," Steven urged. "They're there to learn from. Learning stops us from making them again."

Peridot almost laughed, mockingly of course, but Steven was just glad to see the hint of a smile. "I'd like to see someone say that to a Diamond… before they got crushed into dust." She smoothed a set of fingers through her hair, combing it back into shape as she moved past him. "Though speaking of Diamonds, Yellow might be my only chance of getting back home. I'll need to contact her so she can re-activate the warp pad once it's fixed."

Again she fell into that ramble of not wanting to dwell too much on something she didn't understand, or didn't want to; forcing the conversation's path far away from the Cluster and its sad legacy shining under them. But Steven couldn't let it go as easily as she could. Not without some kind of epilogue, or closure, anything to numb the tragedy of it all.

"...Thanks for showing me this, Peridot," he eventually managed to say, once again stumbling after her as she fled the scene. "I understand… how hard it must have been-"

"It's fine," she snapped out. "I'm fine. I… just want to go home now."

Steven could feel the pain in her voice, almost felt it in his own body. Even if he wasn't a gem, he ached for those shattered and left abandoned in pieces here, light years from home. Maybe that was the fate Peridot feared she'd have, if she didn't get back.

At least, that's what he would have worried most over while stranded in the stars. There were plenty of them out now, stubbornly shining through the dark clouds overflowing across the sky. It would rain again, sooner or later. Hopefully later.

"Is that a moon?" Peridot asked, drawn to a stop only slightly ahead of him. Either she followed his habit of watching the sky, or she only just noticed the moon now the clouds decided to leave it alone to harass the stars instead.

"Our one and only," Steven answered, watching the awe build behind her visor with every blink upwards.

"We don't have any moons on Homeworld," she confessed. "We used to... but they were hollowed out for resources before I emerged." A hand reached up, fingers reaching out further to outline the pearl crescent, like she could pluck it from space itself. Seeing that wouldn't have even surprised Steven.

"Why does it get smaller with every night?" she asked, lowering her hand slowly.

Steven knew exactly why, but he had a better explanation on his mind. "My dad used to say that the moon was shy, so it would sometimes hide away. The stars were its friends, and it didn't want to be brighter than them in case they got jealous."

Well, he'd thought it had sounded better before he heard it out loud, and he quickly regretted it as he rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Uh… must sound pretty stupid to an alien, huh?" He braced himself for a glare that never came.

"...Not as much as you'd think," Peridot muttered, far softer than anything else she'd said before, still gazing at the moon, or maybe just the stars, or the empty space between them. Whatever was up there that got her attention, it took more than just a shake of her head to make her ignore it. This time she marched onwards, not even glancing back up in case she was entranced again. "Enough of that. Time to go to work."

Whether through willpower, luck, or that alien instinct of hers, Peridot found her way right back to where they started. The Injector still sat listlessly, coiled in its own rusted guts, and just like Steven said the warp pad still lay broken where she left it. Likewise, just like Peridot herself said, she sat down in the dark and went straight to work.

"Do you need any help?" Steven asked, watching her gem hum back to life and illuminate where her fingers went as they diligently examined the pad.

"No. Just… let me concentrate, please." Despite her rest she sounded so weary, so much that Steven clamped his mouth shut and made as little noise as possible as he sat down behind her, each of them back to back. He could feel tension all over her, the rapid twitches of her arm muscles as they flitted around and adjusted themselves ten times a second.

"Maybe if I cross these circuits… no, no, doesn't have the right logic gates… bypass the co-ordinate firewall somehow? Pft, I'd be here all night just trying to crack through it…"

Her mutters were gibberish to Steven, and even if he could have helped he knew better than to annoy her this time. So he just listened mutely, sinking against her back and watching the green light that spilled over her shoulders play over his hands and idly kicking the air with a leg swinging back and forth, feeling useless and dusty and so so tired. His eyelids fell so much that anything not right in front of his face was just a blur, time itself fading to nothing.

That was the bulk of his sleepy thoughts, until he forced his eyes open for the tenth time and caught something flashing. He blinked, several times, but it only came again when he tilted his foot back.

Pulling his leg up to where Peridot's light could reach, he quickly noticed something embedded in the heel of his sandal. The ground had been so uneven that he hadn't even noticed it while walking, but prying it off with his thumb revealed a surface barely marked by his trek, and a jewel shard barely bigger than his pinkie. Convenient; even with the green light he could clearly see a pale pink sheen across the glass as he turned it over.

His first urge was to throw it away, before his skin started crawling at the thought of holding a dead gem, a literal dead alien in his hand. But overriding that, even if only slightly, was something Peridot had said about Rose Quartzes. Their gems could heal, not just themselves but others of their kind...

But before he could think of how to explain it to Peridot, she violently shoved herself onto her feet with a near-desperate growl.

"For Diamond's sake, it's hopeless! There's no wires small enough to fit the circuit boards, no fuel left to power it! Even if it _was_ working, I don't even know how to override the security…" She threw the warp pad down, letting it roll past her and leaving Steven to catch it before it escaped, and then threw herself back down with just as much aggression that she launched herself up with.

"I'm stuck here. I just know it…" Peridot hid her defeat in her hair, letting it collapse over her face and snuff out her dull light. Steven resisted comforting her, at least in his usual way. Instead he looked at the pad for himself, noting the rusted gaps in the metal plates and the carved indent near the center. Holding the gem piece over it, there'd be no problem fitting it in. If it would even work.

"Peridot… what about using a Rose Quartz shard to fix it?"

At first she didn't seem to hear him, but with the back of her hand brushing her hair aside she hesitantly turned to face Steven. Her visor glimmered in place of her gem, whether or not her kind could cry, and she eyed him suspiciously as she reached out for the broken piece in his hand, taking it between two thin fingers like something as unpleasant as it was.

But even so, she brought it close to her widening eyes. "That's definitely a Rose… but gems can only repair other gems, not non-sentient pieces of tech."

"They might if you set the gem into the pad," Steven pressed, not about to watch her break down again when she was so close. "Like how a gem can be put in a ring. It can't hurt to try."

Peridot still dangled the shard from her gauntlet, neither rejecting or accepting it just yet as she stared down. "Using a shattered gem… I don't know. It doesn't feel right."

Of all the arguments Steven expected against the idea, he hadn't considered the morals of it. Or more aptly, he hadn't considered someone like Peridot to be bothered by them. But he'd been wrong about her plenty of times before. And it might soon be his last chance to think anything about her, while she was in front of him.

Only if it worked though, and only if he convinced her to try it.

"If I ended up in little pieces, I'd want someone to get some use out of them somehow," he said. "At least, that's how I see it. And the Rose my Dad fell in love with… I think that's what she'd believe as well."

Peridot didn't look as confident as he felt, though that might've just been optimism taking over. Whatever she thought of it, whether or not she could believe it or was just desperate enough to do anything, she took hold of the warp pad and pressed the shard into its center.

"I hope you're right, Steven. For a lot of reasons…" She sighed as her fingers floated away, having firmly settled the gem in the metal and being overly eager to get away from it.

Seconds passed by with no change, ten then twenty and almost a full minute with the scarred metal still as bland as ever. If some tiny facet of the gem was still somehow alive, it seemed intent on waiting for all hope to drain before finally, finally letting out an eruption of magenta light through the pad's fissures. Thrumming, ebbing and almost organic light, a glowing spider web all over the metal that left both gem and human speechless.

"It's… i-it's working?" Peridot whispered her disbelief, as if scared of breaking some illusion.

"Looks like it!" Steven cheered for both of them, silently pumping the air while Peridot so tentatively hovered over the pad and its slowly dissolving cracks, the ancient architecture being completely rebuilt from the inside.

"I… I wasn't expecting…" Peridot laughed, a genuinely happy sound that was as alien to her as she was to Steven, not a hint of smugness or mockery to be heard. And even though she promptly covered it, nothing could have hidden the smile across half her face, not even a new moon night.

"It'll take a while to do its work," she said tightly, so insistent on hiding her joy. "Better not touch it until it's finished."

"What do you wanna do until then?" Steven asked.

Once Peridot stopped throwing paranoid glances at the warp pad, she made a quiet request. "...Would you mind playing some more music?"

Even without a pick on hand, Steven was more than happy to oblige. Anything to keep that smile from the stars burning a little longer.


	8. Chapter 8

Not too long ago, Steven was once terrified of the dark. Just looking out his bedroom window at night would give him shivers, something about not knowing what lay ahead waiting for him in the black. Even now, sitting with Peridot and bathed in the cold light of her gem, he was reminded of that fear, and of what finally chased it away. The evening Dad took him to the beach at sunset, and spent so long pointing out the stars that Steven all but forgot to be scared of the dark sky they shared.

His father always loved space, the stars, the universe they shared a name with. Steven wondered if that was before or after he lost Rose Quartz. How many of those stars had Peridot been to? How many more would she see when she was gone? How many other planets would have ice cream, or hot chocolate, or someone willing to help her out?

Whatever answer would be waiting for her in the distant future… he felt lucky that she landed on this one. That luck was what kept his fingers moving across his guitar long after they went numb, following Peridot's shifting yet subtle expressions to see which notes she liked best. But just when he thought he'd found the perfect song, she remembered what she was waiting for since falling from the sky.

Twisting to reach behind her back, Peridot carefully illuminated the warp pad with her floating fingers, feeling for the healed fissures and dents on the smooth plates where before a nest of broken circuitry spilled out from the split metal.

"Looks good as new!" And Steven meant it; just seeing the pad in the dim green light almost tricked him into thinking the metal was fresh from a forge.

Peridot didn't quite seem to share his enthusiasm as she circled two fingers around the yellow diamond embedded in the center, all trace of the Rose Quartz shard dissolved into thin air. After plucking the diamond out, she held it close to her chest like her last lifeline. "Yeah… even the communicator," she said. "Now I just need to charge it up somehow."

Still clutching what must have been rhe communicator, she boosted herself upright and guided herself to where the Injector still lay dead, staring out blindly through dials and broken buttons. Squinting down at a pried-open panel on the beast's body, Peridot only took seconds to find out what she needed.

"This Injector still has some reserve power, but there's no transfer wires around to connect the power supplies. None thin enough to not overload the warp pad, at least." She straightened with a familiar aching sigh, her back to Steven so she didn't see the glimmer in his eyes when he got the second stupid idea of the evening.

With Peridot busy flitting her gem's glow over the Injector, he fumbled in the gloom for something sharp. And when he eventually did, rolling the small spear of slate in his palm, he started sawing through his guitar strings with it. They snapped out with squeals of protest, but it was easy work and Steven soon had them all gathered in his fist, while his other hand reached out to tap Peridot on the shoulder. She was in the middle of another rant to herself when she noticed what he was holding out to her.

"You said you needed thin wires, right? These should work, they can conduct electricity." He pressed the strings into her palm, surprised at the heat coming up from her gauntlet, almost as surprised as she was while looking down at the offering.

"Steven… you didn't need to-"

"I can get new strings," he pressed, closing her listlessly hovering fingers over the bundle of strings with insistence. "You only have one shot at getting home. Take them."

Even with that reassurance, Peridot let her arm dangle for another long few seconds before finally nodding- such a subtle movement that Steven only noticed the slightest twitch of her hair. She turned back to the Injector, did whatever she needed to do while Steven strapped his stripped guitar to his back, not regretting a single thing.

Once joined together, the lines between the Injector and warp pad fizzled and spat out sparks into the humid air as the nylon melted, leaving bare humming copper to carry the electricity down. In the dark it was like a miniature firework display, one that Steven was almost sad to see end. Peeling the burned strings off with her gauntlets, Peridot approached the pad and, in her usual way, managed to asses it in less than a second.

"Just enough charge for one trip." She hid her emotion well, whatever she might have been feeling at being so close to home. Holding the diamond device silently, running fingers along the cold edges, she seemed to forget where she was for a few second before she remembered Steven was standing behind her with a glance over her shoulder.

"You should hide yourself, Steven," she said. "I don't think my Diamond would react well to seeing a human."

With a hand against his temple, Steven gave a salute of understanding. "Gotcha. Good luck!" He ran ahead behind one of the canyon walls, pressing his back against it with an ear angled towards where he left Peridot. He may have trusted her, but he didn't know a thing about this Yellow Diamond.

A chime of hums sounded from across the rocks, and a yellow light streamed out from the opening beside Steven, like a portal was splitting open. He resisted the urge to peer around, even when he heard a sour scold address Peridot.

"Whoever this is, it better be damn well important-"

"My Diamond!" Despite her hesitancy, Peridot managed to sound utterly relieved when it mattered. "Thank the stars, I've been-!"

"Who are you? How did you access this private line?"

Though Steven couldn't see her, he could tell that Peridot's emotion deflated like a balloon against a barrage of needles. When she spoke again it was with trained and strained patience.

"Uh… Peridot, Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG reporting in. An incident at my assigned colony on Archa left me stranded on this blasted rock-"

"Hm, yes, the asteroid that struck Archa Seven. Such a waste. Which 'blasted rock' would you be referring to, Peridot?" Yellow Diamond sounded bored now, a low drone in her question that revealed she really didn't care about the answer.

Not that it stopped Peridot giving one in false earnest.

"I'm... not sure, my Diamond. It isn't recorded on any galactic maps." She was lying, but Steven would have to keep listening to find out why.

"Is it populated?"

"No. Not from what I've seen."

"Another barren wasteland, then… it certainly looks like one. Well, if you're done wasting my time-"

"My Diamond, wait! Please, I wouldn't disturb you if it wasn't of the utmost importance-"

"Then _spit it out already_."

There was a pause, one that was long enough to tempt Steven from his hiding place. With just his eyes showing from behind the rock, they both widened in shock and squinted against the yellow glare that Peridot stood shaking in. Above her was a giant panel that seemed to hang in the air, like a shimmering mirage, with the most intense scowl he'd ever seen pictured in it. Even from light years away, Yellow Diamond made him flinch back as Peridot finally found what she wanted to say.

"I suspect… that the planet is Earth. It seems after all these years the aftermath of the Cluster has left it deserted. Nothing but a lifeless wasteland."

Yet more lies, but Yellow Diamond sounded intrigued, or perhaps only sated. "...The Cluster ?" she asked with a low hiss. "I was told that it was destroyed by... Rose Quartz." She spat the name out like something unpleasant caught in her teeth.

"Th-that is true, my Diamond, but... perhaps she wasn't as successful as we thought. As you know better than anyone else, the Cluster is immense in size and power. How could a single Rose Quartz destroy it all by herself?"

There was an icy pause. "What are you proposing, Peridot?"

"That the Cluster did not emerge fully as we expected it to, but that it still had the intended effect of destroying all life on Earth."

"And what makes so certain that this wasteland is Earth?"

"The... logs in the warp pad I found refer to the Earth-specific Kindergarten that had to be abandoned. The one that would have served as the..." She gulped. "The Quartz growing grounds."

Apart from Steven's nervous breaths, Peridot stewed in silence for a few long moments. Steven was almost about to check in on her when Yellow Diamond pushed him back into cover with a sudden and slow declaration.

"If you are correct… I suppose that's one less species in the universe to worry about." The Diamond had the smug sound of someone very carefully hiding a smirk. "Your report was satisfactory, Peridot. I will transmit the gateway co-ordinates to any active transport pads on Earth. Give a full report to your manager and return to duty ASAP."

"At once, my Diamond. Thank you." For the first time Peridot's relief sounded genuine, and when the light died away she collapsed with a loud thud in the dirt.

"Peridot!" Steven bolted out to reach her, pulling her back up as she cradled the communicator. Despite her tired wilting eyes, her gem thrummed brightly.

"And to think I was most worried about trying to get past her Pearl..." Peridot steadied herself on her feet, placing the communicator back into its space while Steven stood still behind her.

"...She was the one who wanted Earth to be destroyed?" he asked, barely stopping himself shivering as he remembered his fleeting glance at her.

"It's a long story… but yes," Peridot said, the tremors almost covered by a low rumble across the sky. "As long as she believes it's ruined, then it's safe from Homeworld."

Steven wanted to believe her. "Is that it, then? Everything's ready for you to go?" he asked as she swept the pad clean. Her fingers froze at the question, and there was a long moment of thought before she answered.

"...Not just yet." She stood up. "I'd like to go back first… to say goodbye."

 **xx**

It started raining on the way back, tiny lashes of water against Steven's skin as he skirted the mountain tops with Peridot. He was soaked within seconds of reaching the clouds, but Peridot didn't seem to mind the drops clinging to her. She hadn't even known what rain was just days ago; this might have been her last chance to feel it.

Even through the screen of mist, she managed to land them right in front of Steven's house. And within seconds of arriving, Greg was stamping out the front door like a much smaller, much less regal Yellow Diamond with just as much fury.

"There you are, Steven! I've been worried sick, do you know how late it is!" He stood with hands on hips, numb to the pelt of rain while Steven was still dismounting from Peridot's shoulders.

"Sorry, Dad, I was helping Peridot… she's ready to go home now."

Greg blinked, anger dissolving in the steady drip of water as he stared at Peridot. "Really? So soon?"

"It is imperative that I return while I can," she muttered, vainly trying to stop her hair from falling flat around her face again. Eventually she just shoveled it all over her head to leave her vision clear as she faced Greg.

"Human, er… Greg. I would like to thank you for your hospitality… and for letting Steven help me."

Again Greg blinked in shock, but it was one from how he smiled through the rain. "The Universe boys always seem to get involved with gems somehow. You have a safe trip, Peridot."

Steven watched the cordial exchange from the kitchen window, pouring a cloud of steam into a spare thermos and, just when he was about to go back outside, bounding up to his room for more than just a warm jacket.

Greg and Peridot were shaking hands when Steven reached them again, holding his gifts within his jacket. "I got you something, for the way back," he said, handing Peridot the thermos. "It's got hot chocolate in it, the kind you had when you landed."

Peridot held it skeptically, cupping her fingers around the warm cup, but the smell leaking out seemed to soothe her. Greg retreated back to the house, knowing when it was time to leave his son be, but surely still watching him.

"And I thought you'd like this, if you have tape players back on Homeworld, I mean…" Steven held out his second gift, the one cassette he had left in his room. Putting the thermos under her shoulder, Peridot squinted at the scribble on the front of the tape.

"'Space Train Ticket to the Cosmos'?" she read out slowly, like it was a completely different language.

"I think you'll like it, if you ignore how trains can't go into space," Steven quipped. Peridot's smile was a slow dawning on her face, but worth the wait to see it completely unhindered by embarrassment or anxiety. She put the cassette somewhere safe in her suit, looking at her boots while trying to keep her smile together as she fumbled for parting words.

"Steven. I… I want you to know, though my time here was brief, you were very kind and welcoming to me. And though I didn't often make it obvious, I… appreciated it. Even if you say there's only one Steven on Earth, I hope other humans are like you. Even if in only a small way."

She spoke slowly, the weight of sincerity behind every word, so heavy that Steven caught himself blushing.

"You're special too, Peridot," he told her, when she stood with nothing more to say. "No matter if there's a hundred or a thousand other gems like you, there'll always be something to set you apart. And even if we don't meet again, I'll never forget you."

Out of everything they shared over their few days together, that one promise was the catalyst to a glimmer in Peridot's eyes, one that shone far past her visor.

"...Thank you, Steven." She cleared the distance between them in a single stride, throwing her armoured arms around him. It was the closest they'd been together since they danced, and she radiated such a great warmth around Steven that he half expected the rain to start evaporating around them, leaving them alone on a dry island in a storm.

But the rain only hit harder, accompanied with a crash behind the swarm of dark clouds above them.

"Do you hear that?" Peridot whispered over his shoulder.

"The thunder?" Steven asked back, wondering silently if it was here to see her off, just like how it greeted her.

But this time Peridot didn't shake, didn't cower from the downpour. She clung loosely to Steven as she whispered again.

"...I thought it was the sound of the moon falling."

She let him go, and somehow he stopped himself pulling her back. Maybe it was the shock again, or the rain finally numbing him to the core, that left him standing frozen as Peridot prepared to leave once and for all.

"It was nice knowing you, Steven." Her gem had never been as bright as it was then, and Steven swore he could still see it in the mist long after she was gone.

With no moon in sight, Steven didn't know how long he spent hoping she'd come back, not even when his father reappeared at the front door to call to him.

"Son? Did you leave the rest of my tapes out at the barn?" Out in the rain to get drowned away. Greg took Steven's silence as an admission of guilt, but all he did was pat his son's drenched shoulder.

"Ah well. Maybe Peridot will pick them up on her way and make something useful outta them." He turned away, halfway back inside before he noticed he wasn't being followed.

"Steven? You coming in?" Only his father's concern made Steven finally drag himself to shelter.

"...Dad?" he asked once the door clicked shut.

"Yeah, son?

"Did it hurt this bad when Rose left?" The crack in his voice was a physical pain, one that left him limp in his father's embrace, still numb despite the warmth and so lonely. Here there was no more thunder to cover his heartache, and no rain to hide his tears. For the first time in his life, he wanted to be left in the dark.

 **xx**

 _And there we have it, the end of my not-so-ill fated venture into another fandom. Thank you for reading, and please let me know what could have been done better for the future._


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